Blogging has been a wonderful personal experience for me. I have got to know some very nice people out there. It is a wonderful way to experience myself. I can be my opinionated self. But then I think one should be careful with blogs. I always remind myself of the purpose of my blog. It is by me and for me foremost and incidently for others who care to read it. There was a time when I just activated my comments section and visitor track functionalities (2 weeks to be precise). I literaly got carried away since I was eager to see what people got to say about what I had written or commented in their blogs. It was like a demand that I too had to blog something nice everyday whether I enjoy it or not. All that mattered was how many hits, how many comments and how clever I am in putting things out here. It was in this period that I added most the links in my blog. But then I realized I didnot want to do this. I wanted freedom to write when I wanted and not expecting number of hits or comments. Even to keep track and comment on the moderate number of visitors I had was too much stress on me. That was when I started choosing the blogs I wanted to visit and write about stuff that concerns only me. Even here I made some interesting observations. I liked people who write about their day to day experiences, interesting things they came across in their work, their travel, their happiness and their sorrow. I adore those who share their poetry, stories, and photographs. On the same note it is also boring/irritating to read constant cribbing, bitching, essays written specifically with the expectation of comments (number), self-praise etc. But then I also understand that's just what blogs are for. However much we try, they start telling the story about one's personality. As I am, my blog is also introverted, just the way I like it.

One of my friends asked me, if we got independence due to Gandhi and non-violence. He went on to say that independence was achieved due to violent outbursts and fighting due to people like bhagat sigh, mangal pandey(!), and subash chandra bose. I could not quite agree. He said british had guns and they were able to rule us. Only way we got/could have gotten and to get independence is through a fitting reply in kind. Call me old fashioned, but somehow I disagree. I certainly refuse to believe that we got independence due to violence and violence is a way to permenent solution - in this case independence. I m no great fan of Gandhi, I know relatively little about him. Definitely what is taught in schools is not enough to get a good picture. I respect him though, but then leaving that aside, my question is how can violence be taken as a cure/solution to our problems? Does is mean we have not learnt to live peacefully? If then, are we truely civilized? Or like my other friend claims, we have inherent ability to fight amongst ourselves. Not sure. But very disturbing if it is true.

I still keep on saying to myself everytime I hear about war and blood and pain, "After everything is said and done, I still believe in humanity". Sometimes such believes are shaken.